Palo Alto Stories

I used to throw the star at the fence in the backyard, and it would stick in. I threw it at the cat, Stoney.

When I was twelve I took karate at the YMCA. We learned katas and punches. I learned the katas really well. If you learned the katas, you got the higher belts. The order: white, yellow, orange, blue, green, brown, black. I was happy until I started fighting in school and the katas didn’t do shit for me.

A.J. was in such a bad mood compared to me, but I couldn’t help but laugh at him.

“Better shut up, clown,” he said.

“‘We don’t needfat-ass and ski

“Shut up,clown,” he said, and kicked some of the tanbark at me but it fell short. I was still laughing.

“Cocoa butter!” I yelled. “‘My shit tastes like cocoa butter!’” A.J. grabbed my fur collar and yanked it back and forth, like he was going to shake the laugh out of me, but I was still laughing.

“Shut the fuck up, Teddy, or I swear to God, I’m-a fuck you up.”

He yanked me up by the collar. “Get the fuck up,” he said, and I was on my feet, but my head was going everywhere. “We’re going to Ofra’s.”

“Ofra’s?” He was already walking away from me with the bottle. I followed him out the gate and back across the street toward his house. His green Karma

Then we were driving and I was laughing again. A.J. looked so serious I couldn’t stop for a long while. When he finally spoke he was very quiet.

“All the clowns in the car better shut up,” he said. He was still looking out the windshield. I had my feet up on the dash and no seat belt, and when he said that I laughed harder.

“ Thisclown is shutup,” I said. “What about the other ones?” And I cracked myself up some more. A.J. was driving really fast now.

Ofra Isaac was a girl in our class and she was having a party that night. She had a huge house in the nicest part of town. The fu

Ofra had a lot of parties at her house. Her parents didn’t care. The problem was that Ofra didn’t like me anymore, mostly because I got drunk all the time. The last time I was at her house me and my friend Ivan got in a fight. We stepped all over her white couch with our shoes and somehow we knocked the mezuzah off the front doorpost. Eventually we stopped fighting in her driveway, but Ofra wouldn’t let us back in.

“You don’t want to go to Ofra’s,” I said to A.J.

He didn’t say anything. I looked around for the bottle, but he must have hid it in the back. Nothing was fu

“What do you think, A.J.?” I said. “That April is waiting for you at Ofra’s? That you’re going to hook up with that ass?” His jaw flexed. “April hatesyou, A.J. Everyonehates you.”

It was about eleven o’clock and the cool air from outside was coming in steady through the old Karma

“Okay, A.J. A.J. dog. One question. That’s it, that’s all you got to answer, one question, and then you can be done with me. You can throw me out of this car if you want.” He said nothing, just drove very fast, which was scary around the corners. “Okay, here it is. So what do you think you’ll be doing in twenty years? No, make it easier, tenyears. What will you be doing?”

It was like he didn’t hear me, but he did.

“Rapping?” I said. “Are you going to be a rapper?”

No answer.

“Writing graffiti? Married? Maybe have a bunch of kids? With April? You think you and April are go

A.J. braked the car really fast. So fast that my knees hit the metal dash and the back of the car started sliding. Then we were stopped. He reached across me and opened the passenger door, and then he had his back braced against his door and he was kicking me out the door. I was laughing, except not too much because his kicks hurt and I was trying to stop because A.J. was crying.

“Get the fuck out, get out, get out!” Then my ass hit the ground and I was outside in some grass and the cold air. A.J. drove off. He stopped a few yards away, reached across the seat, and slammed the passenger door. The green hump of the Karma

A paint marker that A.J. used for graffiti had fallen out with me. It had a purple cap and a purple body and on the side it said SOLID MARKER. I sat in the long grass between the sidewalk and the street, and when I took the cap off I saw that the paint stick was two colors: yellow and purple. A.J. had cut the purple paint stick in half and fused it with half a yellow paint stick so that the colors would swirl together. I put the stick in my pants pocket.

I was close to Jordan, my old middle school, where I first met April. I went over there. The lights in the roof of the outdoor halls were on. Some of the old feelings came back, some faces flashed, all things I didn’t like. I drew some large monsterlike baby faces on the walls and wrote FUCK ALL BITCHES LIKE APRIL SPARK in bad graffiti script. I had practiced graffiti writing a lot but I was never going to be as good as A.J., and I was really drunk. Next to one of the large baby monsters I wrote LOVE, A.J. SIMS NIGGA.

Then I walked out of the school yard toward Ofra Isaac’s house.

Ofra’s was pretty far away.

After a while, I saw an old man walking a little white dog. He had a full head of nicely combed white hair. I caught up to him even though I was stumbling a little.

“Hey. Hey, man… ,” I said, in a friendly tone. But the guy didn’t stop. He didn’t look at me, even though I was just a little behind him.

“I’m a really nice guy,” I said, but he walked faster. “I just want some company and you seem like a nice guy too.” I talked to him like that for a few blocks without him answering or looking back. I kept following him even though it was out of my way to get to Ofra’s. I wanted to convince this guy that I was a good person. Then he turned into a house.

“You better get the fuck out of here,” he said. “I’m calling the police, you fucking asshole.” Then he went inside. I left.

I was walking, back on track for Ofra’s. I walked with my head bowed so I could watch my feet.

I started thinking about Jack Kerouac and what a hero he was. “You’re a hero,” I said out loud. “Like Jack Kerouac.” I liked thinking about Kerouac stumbling around drunk.

Then I happened upon another guy. He was old too, with a slightly bigger, brown dog. He was taller than the first guy. He wore an Irish cap and was a little more disheveled. When I tried to pass him, he said, “Hey,” and smiled.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Nothing, just walking my dog.”

“I’m not here to mug you or anything,” I said, because of the other guy being so scared.

“I know,” he said.

“Can I walk with you?”

“Sure,” he said, and we walked.

“I’ve been fighting with my girlfriend,” the old guy said. “She won’t give me any head.”

“That sucks,” I said.

“You have a girl?”

“No. Fuck girls,” I said.

“Yeah. Fuck ’em,” he said.

“Fuck guys too.”

We walked without talking for a bit.

Then he said, “When I was young, I was really angry and shy. I’d do stupid stuff like steal and set fires. I never got caught. Now I’m old and I feel the same way. You know what I mean? I don’t likeanything.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Is that how youfeel?”

“Yeah, I hate everything,” I said.

We walked past a church. I had read Ibsen’s Ghostsin the parking lot one day while waiting for an AA meeting because the court made me go.